


Of Chewing Gum and Black Holes

by Emerald147



Category: Original Work
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Depressing, First Person, Metaphors, Minor Character Death, Sad, Similes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 05:32:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6502687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emerald147/pseuds/Emerald147
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If I wanted to describe my life in one big metaphor I would probably say: “My life is like a piece of chewing gum” (Yes, I know, that’s a simile, not a metaphor). It started out perfectly, my life, that is, the surface and inside smooth, neat and unblemished. But then the teeth came. Teeth like rows of houses in the distance, like the houses I left behind. The throat is like the eyes of the storm, unmoving and peaceful. But the storm rages on until you meet your end. Chewing gum, no matter how much it might want to, can never meet its end, not until you throw it out. But chewing gum sticks. So, I suppose, my life is quite a bit like chewing gum. I’ve been bitten so many times now; I’m just a mangled tasteless mess.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Chewing Gum and Black Holes

If I wanted to describe my life in one big metaphor I would probably say: “My life is like a piece of chewing gum” (Yes, I know, that’s a simile, not a metaphor). It started out perfectly, my life, that is, the surface and inside smooth, neat and unblemished. But then the teeth came. Teeth like rows of houses in the distance, like the houses I left behind. The throat is like the eyes of the storm, unmoving and peaceful. But the storm rages on until you meet your end. Chewing gum, no matter how much it might want to, can never meet its end, not until you throw it out. But chewing gum sticks. So, I suppose, my life is quite a bit like chewing gum. I’ve been bitten so many times now; I’m just a mangled tasteless mess.

~*~

 When I was younger – about eight or nine – my life was perfect. My innocence guarded me from the reality of the real world. But, like a sweet wrapper (another great simile, don’t you think), all it does is change how you see things – how I saw things. Sometimes, it isn’t enough.

  _Bite._

 It was very sudden. I can barely remember what happened. All I remember, all I know, is that, suddenly, she was gone. I was with my dad at the time and my mum had just texted to say she was on her way home from work – she didn’t have a very interesting job, so there’s no point in going into detail about it. No problems. We heard a knock at the door. It was a very official sounding knock; the kind that tells you without words that there’s something you need to know. It wasn’t my mum. Her knock was full of life. It sounded like birds do when they wake up the world with their songs. It sounded like a sunrise would – if it made a noise – alive with the promise that all your troubles, all your worries, can be left behind. You throw them out when you let her in. It was not my mum at the door.

  _Bite._

 It only took five words. Five words for me to see the rows upon rows of teeth that waited for me like a fox stalks a rabbit, just before it pounces.

 “We regret to inform you…”

 There it was. The black hole of oblivion. If a black hole had light it wouldn’t be a black hole. My light disappeared that day. I guess, in some ways, my life became a black hole that day (shock, horror, it’s an actual metaphor). I was a star, you could say, and all it took for me to go supernova were the next fifteen words.

 “Mrs Ash is dead. She died in a car-crash. We are sorry for your loss.”

  _Bite._

 They’re sorry!? “Sorry for our loss”!? They know nothing of ‘our loss’. My heart was black-hole-swallowed, stretched and pulled in so many directions by so many emotions – fear, anger, sadness to name a few – that I thought it might tear. Bite.

~*~

 After that day, I turned to anger. Anger is the easiest emotion, I think, and it has the strongest pull. If I didn’t choose anger, it may have ripped my heart in two. Her leg was in two, you know? Her fibula was snapped right in two, crushed by the weight of her dashboard. I can only imagine how painful it was.

_Bite._

My dad hates me now. I know he doesn’t blame me for her death, that’s not why. It’s because I looked so much like my mother – at that age anyway. He turned to anger too. If his heart couldn’t resist anger’s siren call, how could mine? Anger is definitely a siren, now that I think about it. Blinding you with promises, saying they’ll make everything better. The promise that it can burn away your skin and burn away who you were, letting you start anew. But, like a siren, anger wears a mask. In truth, anger burns away everything you are, leaving behind only a barren landscape – noone and nothing left to ‘start anew’. Sure, it burns away your skin, but leaves burning agony and nothing more in its wake.

_Bite._

 Then the bullying started. I joined school when I was eleven – I was homeschooled until then. No one knew much about me, no one wanted to. If they were all chewing gum, they would have smooth skin and rounded edges, not at all like me – semi-tasteless and covered in teeth marks. I didn’t fit in, that’s why they chose to bully me. To them, I was just the chewing gum that’s hardened under their desks, obnoxious and disgusting. To be around me, for them, was like being around a black hole. Perhaps, like gravity, pity would pull them in, but sooner or later, they’d throw their lifelines to the safety of their innocent sweet wrapper lives. No one should touch a piece of chewed up gum, it’s ‘unsanitary’. You know, my mum was slightly obsessed with everything being sanitary; that’s why I kept my sweet wrapper innocence before she died. I’ve gotten over her death now (well, it’s less raw anyway), but back then, only a year after she left, I was a mess. It was like being stomped on relentlessly, not just chewed by synchronised jaws. I can’t imagine my dad was much better; he lost the love of his life, the one who held an innocent sweet wrapper to guard his heart from the outside world, just as she did for me. My class-mates feared me, I think. They feared, not my mangled semi-tastelessness, but my black hole heart. It’s near invisible and creeps like shadows do when a fire spread into the hearts of a loving family – something I can never have.

 There was one girl though. One girl who, instead of being swallowed by my eternal dark gravity, orbited around me in unexplainable awe. She was my pinprick of light in the distance. Her hand was a hand to grasp at when the darkness turns on you and you have to run as if death itself is chasing you. I wonder if my mum could hear death’s ghostly footsteps closing in when the engine exploded. I wonder, sometimes, if she was scared.

 Her name was Freya. In her ambience I could forget being a piece of chewed up gum, that I have a black hole for a heart. I could be the person I wished to be. We did everything together, from homework to shopping. We were stuck like two pieces of chewed up gum would. But, what confused me was that she wasn’t chewed up and stuck on the underside of a desk, she lived in a box, unaware of the harsh reality that lay beyond her plastic walls. I wasn’t going to take that away from her. The bullying hadn’t stopped, but one look from Freya’s minty green eyes, so filled with concern I was surprised the walls weren’t damp with it, I felt the teeth that grabbed me by the scruff of my neck to drag my happiness towards the black hole retract and back away. She was shy, a bit reclusive but incredibly clever. All her faults – her tendency to bite her fingernails and how scared she was of animals –were just pieces in the magnificent jigsaw puzzle of her personality, faults and all. She wore a honey crown and claimed mint for her eyes – eyes that never hid anything in black holes, but sent her emotions out like the waves of energy that came from her star.

_Bite._

~*~

 It didn’t last long, how could it? Fate doesn’t favour chewed up and tasteless pieces of gum. If anything, it scorns them and throws them into their own black hole hearts. Freya may have been a fresh piece of gum, but she was small and somewhat fragile. All it took was one bite and she was thrown away. Cast out like yesterday’s leftovers, as if she was a mangled, tasteless chewed up piece of gum. It’s all wrong, she was a star – no, a galaxy – and not a black hole like me. Then again, my mum was like that, full of love and light but death seems to like those kinds of people. Maybe, a life is chosen the same way I pick the flowers for my mum’s grave, I pick the most beautiful. Do you think death picks people like I do flowers? The flowers with the most vibrant colours are chosen first and the ugly are left to die. A chewed up piece of gum with a black hole for a centre is definitely ugly. With star-shaped petals that reach desperately at the light and the kind of fire that warms up cold hearts at her centre it’s no wonder death chose her for it’s morbid bouquet.

 _Bite_.

~*~

 He was gone. I came back one day and like a bubble he was empty and then he popped. I know I’m just a piece of chewed up gum, but am I so disgusting that he has to run? I guess so. I mean, who doesn’t recoil in contempt when they touch a piece of gum, stuck to the underside of a desk? I knew something was wrong when I heard the knock again. All business sounding and as uncaring as a winter blizzard. It was not my dad. My dad has a very specific knock. Exactly four knocks, with syncopation. It’s a light-hearted knock, one that arrives like the sun does when it appears from behind clouds. Even after my mum died, his knock stayed the same, but with a shadowy sad echo to it. It wasn’t my dad at that door.

_Bite._

 “We regret to inform you…”

 There it was. Those five words. Those five words that started the teeth gnashing, those five words that started my downwards spiral into the depths, the rows of gleaming white houses in the distance.

 “Mr Ash was just seen jumping from his office window. We are sorry for your loss.”

_Bite._

 Sorry!? They claim to be sorry but are they really? No. No they’re not. No one’s ever sorry for those pieces of gum you find on your shoe. No one is truly sorry for black hole hearts. Then they walked away. They walked away and I had never felt so small. It felt like I was watching from a bin; looking up as they walked away, leaving me to rot. I wasn’t eighteen at that point, so, legally, I was supposed to go to an orphanage. A place filled with other chewed up pieces of gum that never had sweet wrapper innocence. But I didn’t want that. I might’ve been being hypocritical, not wanting to be around chewed up gum even though I am one, but I didn’t want to live with them, so I didn’t.

_Bite._

~*~

 Rain. Of course, rain. It just had to rain tonight. I think Fate is laughing its metaphorical head off at the new development in the latest of its jokes. Maybe Fate has had it out for me from the start? Letting me keep my sweet wrapper innocence for so long and then ripping it out of my young hands. I bet Fate is having a right laugh at me now, seeing me half frozen with icicles hanging from my chewed up fingertips and shivers playing tag down my spine. The best place to sleep I can find is a dilapidated bridge that carried people over a river that cried so much that it has run dry. This is where I am now, sitting under a bridge with the rain hitting the ground as often as there are stars in the sky. A chewed up, mangled and tasteless piece of gum with a black hole for a heart. I wonder, is anything going to get better? I hope so. I really hope so…


End file.
